Supporting Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection



Jimmy Biggs The annual Cabrini Connections Golf Benefit is named in memory of Jimmy Biggs, a young man who grew up in Cabrini Green with the help of the volunteer tutors/mentors of Cabrini Connections. Jimmy became part of the tutor/mentor program when he was in 2nd grade. He graduated from high school in 1995 and became part of the Cabrini Connections staff.

Jimmy championed the goals of Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Jimmy had a personal goal of recruiting 100 CEOs and "people of influence" to be his personal mentors and his partner in bringing resources to Cabrini Connections and similar mentoring-to-career programs throughout Chicago. Jimmy was working toward this vision when he died suddenly in August 2000. Because of the friends and "people of influence" Jimmy met at the annual golf benefit, the event is named in his honor.
The mission of Cabrini Connections is to provide an organized structure that empowers and encourages volunteers to give their time, talent and dollars in seeking life-changing solutions for children who live in educationally disadvantaged environments.

Cabrini Connections is a grassroots 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in October 1992 and incorporated in February 1993. Its purpose is to address the large number of children who fail to obtain basic skills and experiences necessary to compete for employment in the global economy of the 21st century. The organization believes after-school tutoring, mentoring and school-to-work programs will make a significant difference, encouraging young people to finish high school and enter the work force versus dropping out and joining the welfare generation.

The organization operates a site-based program called Cabrini Connections, which is a comprehensive, long-term mentoring-to-career program.
Since its inception, Cabrini Connections has created school-to-work opportunities for inner-city children by recruiting volunteers to provide quality after-school tutoring and mentoring to teenagers living in the Cabrini-Green area of Chicago. More than 525 youth have had one to seven consecutive years of tutoring/mentoring in this program since January 1993. Many are now college graduates. Visit www.cabriniconnections.net to learn more and see photos of this program in action.

While Cabrini Connections puts this mission to work in a single site, it created the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC)in 1993 to help all poverty neighborhoods of the Chicago region have comprehensive, volunteer-based tutoring and mentoring-to-career programs. The goal of the T/MC is to gather and organize all that is known about successful non-school tutor/mentor programs and share that knowledge to help expand the availability and enhance the effectiveness of these services to children throughout Chicago and in any poverty area of the country. Visit www.tutormentorconnection.org and http://tutormentor.blogspot.com to learn more about the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

View the Golf Benefit Photo Gallery:
Golf Photos
2004 Golf Photos
2008 Golf Photos

View Cabrini Connections videos


Cabrini Connections Photo Album

Learn more about Tutor/Mentor Connection:

* the Main Tutor/Mentor Connection web site
* the Tutor/Mentor Institute
* the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and T/MC map gallery.